Saturday, April 12, 2014

The Drumbeat of Studies Disparaging Glucosamine Keeps Getting Louder

I know, I know, I’ve written A LOT about the (probable)
uselessness of glucosamine (unless you’re susceptible to the placebo effect)

Then along comes yet a new study slamming the supplement.
The L.A. Times did a nice write-up here.

Below are the three most interesting things about the study,
in my opinion. But first the study, in bare bones form, looked like this:

The 201 subjects were 35 to 65 years old and complained of
knee pain. For six months, about half of them consumed a daily lemonade drink
that contained glucosamine hydrochloride (which the study’s lead author notes
doesn’t differ pharmacologically from the more common glucosamine sulfate). The
others drank the lemonade but without the added glucosamine.

#1 "Roughly 10% of the U.S.
population uses the supplement, study authors said."

Did not see that one coming. The U.S.
population is, what, 310 million? So about 31 million people take glucosamine.

Hey, that gives me an idea. :) This is directed to those 31
million people spending $10 monthly on glucosamine pills:

You all need to buy this book, Saving My Knees (link on
upper right). It will tell you why you shouldn’t bother taking glucosamine.
You’ll recoup the cost of the book in one month and have a net savings of $110
the first year (and I’ll finally be a multi-millionaire, cough, cough).

#2 "The urine was tested for levels of C-terminal
cross-linking telopeptide of type II collagen (CTX-II), a molecular marker for
cartilage tissue degradation."

This is the first glucosamine study I’m aware of that
analyzed urine samples to look at whether cartilage rates of deterioration had slowed.
Why does that matter?

Well, it shows that attempts to ascertain whether
glucosamine has any salutary effect are getting more sophisticated. And,
whatever they look at, they’re still not finding a benefit.

#3 "Study authors said theirs was the first to use MRIs to
evaluate glucosamine's effects on cartilage and bone marrow lesions."

So this study is the first, the authors claim, to use MRIs
to peek directly at the condition of the cartilage and bone. And, using this
more advanced technology, researchers still found no glucosamine-related improvement.

Ah deloupy, if only I knew how to drive all the spammers under the big rock where they belong! ;) Yes, I do have a problem with the spam comments. Unfortunately, the real solution is to put fresh comments in a "holding pen" and not release them on the blog until I approve each, one by one. But that slows down the flow of commenting (and would discourage some people from commenting completely). So for now, I am watching the spam ...

Everything was going fine and my knees were getting better but then I went to hit a few golf balls and I got a onset of pain (5-10 minutes) and which made it very difficult to put any weight on it. Did you have any incidences like this? Not sure if it is something new or just the pfps again?

Not specifically like that, no. But I had many setbacks, and in my book, all setbacks belong broadly to the same family. They're disheartening and you learn, much to your chagrin, that your knees aren't as strong as you had hoped. It's a long, long, long process. I can't overemphasize that. But take heart -- that "everything was going fine" is encouraging. (By the way, I don't know much about the forces exerted on knees during golf, but the combo of a really muscular swing and torquing of the joint simultaneously I can't imagine is a good thing.)

Welcome to Saving My Knees!

This blog is named for Saving My Knees, the book, which can be ordered in an electronic version from Amazon (and to read it you don't need a Kindle, just a PC, which I explain here). I also have a Web site.The best place to take your bad knee(s) is Sports Center, if you can get there. And, if you want good answers to tough questions, try Doug Kelsey's blog The View (which he no longer contributes to, but search the bountiful archives). Okay, I'm all linked out!

About Me

My name is Richard Bedard. I am a financial journalist living in New York City. I struggled for more than a year with chronic knee pain that was so bad I had to quit my job. I decided to embark on my own journey to see if I could save my knees -- and, along the way, learned to my surprise that much of what I was told and instructed to do by doctors and physical therapists was just wrong. So I sat down and wrote a book about my experience, and how I healed, called "Saving My Knees."